Regular readers will know that I do like to combine my passion for making things with food, and I am never happier than when I can make something that can be used to cook food, and if there is a fire involved so much the better, which brings me to my latest project. A table top food smoker and dehydrator.

Now sometime ago I built a food smoker for the garden which can be used for both Hot and Cold smoking, and you can see the video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLV1KHZimSg and whilst its enriched my life its not very portable. Now it so happens I have been invited to demonstrate at the Enfield Food festival on the 28th of August and so I decided its time to make myself a new version, which is portable. They are now billing me as The Old Blokes Kitchen – Live , so there is a lot of expectation to live up to.

As you can see from the picture its most definitely a table top version, albeit at the bare metal stage, but it comes with a few added features. At the moment I have got as far as building the smoker carcass and fitted the mesh shelves, its still missing front and back which is a project for this weekend, and the connections to the charcoal burner. However you will also notice a fan on top which is the secret feature which transforms this from just a basic cold smoker. I want to be able to dehydrate food and smoke it at the same time. To that end I have Hungarian peppers growing in one of my workshops which once smoked and dehydrated will become smoked paprika, I just needed the machine to do it. Once you start thinking it through all sorts of possibilities appear. At the food fair which is held on a farm they will have stock of misshapen tomatoes, which can then be processed to make smoked tomato powder , all organic, packed full of flavour, and you wont be able to buy it in any supermarket. Can you improve on a super food, The perfect foodie ingredient, I feel confident that famous chefs will be beating a path to my door, I cant wait. I just need to build it, paint it, then test it and hope that it works. But in my mind its brilliant, I just need to convince everyone else. Why not come along and find out

As always there will be a video so remember to follow the blog and you can be one of the first to find out just how well this works.